The small, handy cameras we have at the tip of our fingers today are part of a long and varied history that goes back more than 100 years. It is tricky to say when, exactly, the very first camera was invented, because early prototypes of cameras, or camera-like tools existed long before anything practical, portable, and usable by people in everyday life was widely available (such as the pinhole camera and the camera obscura). Having said that, there are several pioneers throughout history who made significant breakthroughs in camera technology, and their names are the ones we now associate with the invention of the first camera. Let’s take a look through these pioneering figures who made the ingenious camera technology of today possible.
Pre-History of Photography: Camera Obscura
A camera obscura is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted and reversed projection of the image. The earliest documented explanation of camera obscura systems comes from Chinese philosopher Mozi (c. 470-391 BCE). Images captured by a camera obscura can’t be printed, and are manually traced. More modern commentary on the camera obscura came from the Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham in the 11th century. From at least 1550 it was used as a drawing aid throughout Europe.
Nicéphore Niépce: Heliography
The French inventor Nicéphore Niépce is credited with creating the first photo camera that could create permanent images in 1825. In his early experiments, he toyed with how a negative image could be created on paper coated with silver chloride, but these resulting images were temporary. However, following several later chemical explorations, he discovered that a film made from Bitumen of Judea mixed with pewter could produce permanent photographic images (with a blurred quality) when exposed inside a camera obscura. Niépce called this process “heliography.” Meanwhile, Niépce’s younger colleague, Louis Daguerre, a former apprentice in architecture and theater design, carried on Niépce’s work into the mid and late 19th century.
Louis Daguerre: Daguerreotype Camera
Following Niépce’s death in 1833, Louise Daguerre eventually produced the first ever portable camera in 1839. Daguerre produced a type of box camera which he called the Daguerreotype, in which a plate coated with a thin film of silver iodide was exposed to light, often for several minutes or even hours. Daguerre treated the image with mercury vapor and hot saltwater to remove the silver iodide, thus revealing a permanent image left behind. Daguerreotypes produced images in reverse, or mirror image.
Exposure times for early Daguerreotypes were long, but as the concept of the camera continued to evolve, shorter exposure times meant the cameras could be used to take portrait photographs for the first time ever. Such was the popularity of the Daguerreotype, the French Government was proud to show off the design as a “gift to the world.” However, the Daguerreotype was not without its drawbacks – it was an expensive process, and could create only one, single photographic image.
William Henry Fox Talbot: Negative Film
At the same time that Daguerre made his breakthrough discoveries, an Englishman called William Henry Fox Talbot was also working on a type of camera which he called a Calotype. Talbot unveiled his camera in 1839 to the Royal Institute in London. In contrast with the Daguerreotype, Talbot’s camera worked with a different series of chemical processes – he began with a sheet of writing paper, treated with silver nitrate and coated in potassium iodide. Just before being used to capture an image, the Talbot coated the paper in gallo-nitrate of silver to produce a film ready for exposure. The paper was exposed to the image through a box camera for just a few minutes, before being washed with a new layer of gallo-nitrate of silver to fix the image in place.
While Talbot’s camera had a far slower exposure time than the Daguerreotype, it produced negative images with a blurred quality. In order to make a positive print from the negative, Talbot soaked a new sheet of paper in salt solution, and brushed it on one side to make it light sensitive. After placing the Calotype negative over this sheet of paper, Talbot covered the two sheets with a glass plate and shone light onto them, allowing light to pass through from the upper sheet of paper and translate the negative into a positive image on the sheet below – and voila! The first print from a negative film was created.
George Eastman: Photographic Film
The use of photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1888–1889. His first camera, which he called the “Kodak”, was first offered for sale in 1888. The first Kodak camera was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the camera manufacturers for processing and reloading when the roll was finished.
Lumiere Brothers: Movie Camera
The invention of still photo images led to experimentation with motion images. Eadweard Muybridge, a British photographer, began experimenting with photographs of horses in motion in 1877. Using a series of cameras triggered by wires, Muybridge was able to capture a sequence of images that, when played back in rapid succession, created the illusion of motion. Étienne-Jules Marey, a French physiologist, invented the “chronophotographic gun” in 1882. It was a device that could take multiple photographs on a single roll of film, capturing motion in a series of images.
But it is the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, who are often credited with inventing the first movie camera and projector. In 1895, they developed the Cinématographe, a lightweight motion picture camera that could both record and project moving images. The Cinématographe was revolutionary because it could film and project images at 16 frames per second, which was close to the speed necessary for creating the illusion of motion. The first public showing of projected moving pictures was in December 1895 in Paris, France. In 1911, the first Hollywood studio opened.
Steven Sasson: Digital Photography
The first digital camera was invented by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Kodak, in 1975. He built digital camera technology using a Fairchild 100×100 pixel CCD sensor, a digital cassette recorder to store images, and a television screen to display them. The prototype weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg) and took 23 seconds to capture a black-and-white image. The first digital consumer cameras were launched in the 1990s, and the first camera phone in 2000.
Originally published: May 16, 2023. Last update: March 5, 2025, by Jessica Suess.
